Why it's hard to fire cops

NYPD
officers stand guard at the scene of an early morning shooting
near Penn Station in Manhattan, New YorkThomson Reuters

It takes a lot to get fired from Chicago’s police
department.

A review of internal documents by the Chicago
Tribune showed that a small
handful of the city’s officers were overwhelmingly responsible
for the majority of complaints over the last five decades.

And even when complaints racked up, firing was uncommon.
“In the comparatively few instances that Chicago police found
wrongdoing or rule-breaking, firing officers was exceedingly
rare, happening in about one-half of 1 percent of cases,” the
Tribune reported.

The report comes one week after police
officials proposed huge
changes to department protocol that would
curb officers’ use of firearms and stun guns, changes that come
amid criticism that Chicago cops too readily rely on potentially
deadly force. Last December, the Department of
Justice launched an
investigation into Chicago Police
Department, and the city is struggling to rebuild trust with the
community in the wake of last year’s fatal shooting of Laquan
McDonald, a black teenager.

From 1967 to 2014, seven officers racked up more than 100
complaints, according to the Tribune, which range from civilian
grievances, such as excessive force, unlawful arrest or verbal
abuse, to administrative no-nos, like drinking on the job or
improper maintenance of police equipment. The Tribune found that
another 62 officers were responsible for at least 70
complaints.

Almost 90 percent of all complaints against officers were
ultimately found unsubstantiated by the department’s internal
investigatory team. One officer who has received at least
90 complaints during his career is currently serving in the
high-ranking position of commander of a police district on the
West Side, according to the Tribune’s analysis.

Police
officers stand together in silence outside the Christ Tabernacle
Church as they listen to the funeral service for slain New York
Police Department (NYPD) officer Rafael Ramos in the Queens
borough of New York December 27, 2014.Reuters/Mike Segar

But Chicago isn’t an anomaly. A major theme of the
criminal justice reform movement in the last few years has been
the struggle to properly discipline police officers. Here’s a
brief rundown of notable reports on other cities:

Cleveland

A 2014 investigation by
the Justice Department into Cleveland’s police department found
that 51 officers out of a 1,500-person force were disciplined
between 2010 and May 2014. Investigators tasked with conducting
unbiased reviews of instances of deadly force acknowledged to the
DOJ that they “conduct their investigations with the goal of
casting the accused officer in the most positive light
possible.”

New York City

According to the Civilian Complaint Review
Board, which processes grievances against New
York City police, 17 percent of the 36,000 officers currently on
the force have received four or more complaints, but only
about 10 percent of all officers have ever received at least
one substantiated CCRB complaint.

In 2012, the CCRB received 5,741 complaints in total. Just
258 of those complaints were substantiated, according to
a review of the data by
WNYC. The review board recommended that the police department
seek charges in 175 cases. Despite their recommendations, the
NYPD sought charges in just seven cases.

Baltimore

Baltimore police failed to share more than two-thirds of
police misconduct cases with the city’s Civilian Review Board
from 2013 to 2015, according to an analysis by the
Baltimore Sun. The Department of Justice concludedearlier this year that
the department’s internal affairs bureau failed to hold police
officers accountable and had been “plagued by systemic failures”
for years.